Good playing but terrible singing, and only in the Smokestack jam does the interplay get really tasty. This SBD is also one of the unevenest you can get, with the terrible vocals deafening you as you strain to hear the instruments.

That show was really terrible, that whole tour was terrible. This show is ok, the opart between 4:20 and 4:30 is the bst part, th rest of it is just ok, reminds me of Hartford 92, since there wasn't one. I am a twirlhead I should know. Hartford is a disgusting place. case closed. Or shall w discuss how great New Haven is. Instead try somewhere Normal, like Normal Illinois, That's where the Normal shows tend to be. Akron is good also,and Richfield and Nssau and Clark College 69 was pretty good, the initial 420 show.

Nice sound..rich and full~~Great Bird Song and as for the Smokestack..I'll take 3-28-85 over this one any day~what captures my attention is the..Louie Louie>Samson~Oh My! There are many highlights from this show~~You decide what captures your attention~!!! Give It A Whirl>Forever Grateful>Forever Dead

Listen to what I am writing: This Birdsong could possibly be the Grateful Dead at their very best. Sure there are more thumping Ikos, like 3-30-87, and the merriweather 85 Sampson, but the whole night is excellent. The whole style of groove for the night is get down nasty. The Birdsong just hits this pinnacle where everyone listens to each other, they all kick ass. The song just is what is symbolizes. The melancholy to the true sense of the word. Meli in Greek is honey, and cholia is bitter. Death is bitter, but the fragility of it all is so beautiful. Garcia's solo is painting with a guitar. Bobby is a chordal master on this song also, he just eggs on Garcia with bridging the dissonant chords with the sweetness of the harmonic pleasantries that we need to resolve. If you are an old head that really needs that elixir of a new dead show to really get to know, this one is a really good choice. There is a reason that the 88 got hot like the Kaiser run before this Easter Weekend. Garcia was clean or at least not the monster trying to meet the current of the lightening strike.
I would like to qualify that I am not a twirl head either, I know real music, like Coltrane's Giant Steps and all of the outakes of the Title tune, and the other tunes on that album. Eric Dolphy, Thelonius Monk, and the boy wonder of my elementary school Brad Meldhau, this dude can play the piano. And i know Birdsong and the way the Dead play it would intrigue John Coltrane, he would have really been fond of Garcia, he would have understood him on many levels.
You want a musical journey, this is a fine choice. And teabag69 its more like D bag. The timbre in your review, like you know what's up, I know why the Band got sick of heads, that is the type of review, that speaks to yourself and no one else. I would want people to feel that going back into the womb feeling that this show gives. It is the soul coming home. I would want any human to experience the joy that I get from that show, if 10% of the people could hear that the world would have a shot. he reason is the Birdsong. I have heard all of those Warfield acoustic sets from 80 and Radio City. I have heard many different Birdsongs and especially love the Warfield 10-10-80 solo by Garcia. But this Birdsong takes the cake. This show gets the gold just for the Birdsong, even though many of the songs are solid in the first set. This Birdsong has one of the most spectacular electric jams. The communication between all of them is special. Granted I could take or leave the second set, but the first set is really smoking. Again I am saying the on the value of the birdsong i give this show highest ratings.

This is probably the best Weir Smokestack ever, all due to Jerry playing his ass off, some serious stuff. Not your usual throw away version to be sure! edit Teabag69-Really? ok, 300 plus GD shows, first Nassau 81 at 14, full time since summer 92 (every damn show but 1). I think that qualifies me an opinion. I stand my statement, Jerry just rips amazing. Louie is also riopping! Try listening again!

This was the show Jerry lost his voice but made up for it very big time with the Louie Louie. Jerry was always a musician first, and a showman second, but he took the latter almost as seriously as the former, so if he didn't give the fans their money's worth in his own mind, then LOOK OUT very soon. Always had a blast in Hartford, literally! The hotel was attached to the venue, making for a chance to explore previously unknown dimensions. Another fabulous Charlie Miller show. Thank you, Charlie: if you can't do it, nobody can!

This was my first show. I was a bright-eyed 15-year-old Connecticut kid, and enjoyed it immensely. It sounds great here. I am a big Charlie Miller fan, since learning about the Internet Archive a few years back. I have to disagree with TeaBag69. There were a lot of phenomenal shows after the late 80s. There were indisputably a lot of heartbreaking things I too witnessed (gate crashing, more and more zombie kids wandering the lots, fist fights, and, most importantly Jerry's decline), but there were so many moments of shared humanity, kindness, and some smokin' music. And, it's not all about how many shows you've seen it which era...I bet you never saw Pigpen, TeaBag69. I love to see the teenagers with no shoes and haircuts their high school teachers disapprove of, when I catch a Furthur-style show these days. Especially when they are singing along to all of the words!

For example - please state if you have seen a show or not, and if so how many, and what era. It is important to point out if you were only seeing shows so we have the right perspectiove on what we are reading. Because hearing comments below like "not the usual throwaway" Weir Smokestack - tells me the reviewer is very inexperienced when it comes to live Grateful Dead. Obviously - this reviewer never attended a show in '84 or '85 when Smokestack would come piercing through the arena like a runaway freight train. Syracuse '84 and Hampton '85 immediately come to mind, both excellent shows I attended. And of course possibly my favorite version i saw - Cincinnati '85, which was a scorching hot show. That era's versions were way better than this - Garcia ripping, Phil's original 6-string putting holes in your stomach, Brent screaming on the Hammond B-3 which was way underused after '86. The shows I saw post-coma PALE in comparison to the shows I saw '83-'86. I saw well over 100 shows, both coasts and many spots in between. They were clean, tight, even good some nights in the late-'80's - but the raw power and wildness in their sound was gone and the chance-taking days were over. We were very lucky folks to catch the last great era that ended in '85. After that it was stadiums, Dylan covers, Touch Heads, nitrous, idiots trying to gate-crash even after the band says stay the h#ll away if you don;t have tix, and B-level shows. Folks the real Dead scene was much better than that trust me. When the Dead get banned from the Greek and Frost - which actually happened after '89 - there is a very, very big problem. Don't get me wrong, I loved the fact they stayed on the road but to make it sound like these shows were great is simply inaccurate and unrealistic on every level. I walked away disappointed too many times.

This Hartford stand is an enjoyable run for a late-'80's tour. The 3rd sounds much better than this night which has way too much audience in the mix, it even sounds like an AUD at many points. CM's efforts are appreciated beyond belief by us early/mid-'80's Pre-Touch era Heads.

PS after listening again I need to add, as for this this smokestack - it is an absolute raging version. best weir version ever, absolutely not, but the Dead still hit some brilliant moments in the late 80's even though I felt overall the sound was a bit tame and flat compared to early/mid-80's. This is one of those moments. They always played well in hartford it seems, going back to one of my favorite all time tapes, 7.31.74.

21 years today